Red X: Captives

Copyright © 2020 Barrett C Carver. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a review. This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Chapter One: Lone Gunman

No solution? No way out? No chance? When The Agency was cornered like this, they still had one card to play. The ace up their sleeve. It wasn't cheating - it was magic.

Three magic words: "Just Send Pryce."

Pryce was their final answer, and the last word. He was like an eleventh commandment.

Pryce was a high-level operative in The Agency. He was handsome, and loyal, but he had a reputation: his methods were brutal. His debriefings always came from his own account. His narrative. Everyone knew he covered something up. Often, there were no other witnesses.

His reports gained an audience: stern faces, well-pressed suits, well-practiced scowls... they'd all gather behind that one-way mirror, and watch. They loved Pryce, as an Agency operative. They hated him, as a rival. None of them would admit it, but they were in his shadow. They could only look at Pryce through that one-way mirror. They knew they'd never be like him.

He was always quiet about that rift.

There was something vaguely British about Pryce, but his nationality was unclear. Paul Bettany or Ewan McGregor could play him, in Hollywood. He had a lean jaw and piercing blue eyes. Even when he smiled, he was an arctic wolf. His presence was steely and bright.

His friend Ginny was a fellow operative. Sometimes, she took him out to the bar. She said his intensity never really stopped. Even when he was drunk, he was keen as a knife. He was a folding knife that always kept its edge - the edge was tucked out of sight.

He had a wiry build, but he was tough as hell. Tougher than hell; Ginny said you could break hell over his back, and Pryce would just grin. He wore loose dress shirts and simple blazers, like disguising the solid rock underneath. He carried himself like one of those young, savvy executives who wore jeans and facial scruff. Cool, relaxed... total façade.

Someone once called him The Sixth Bullet. They meant Russian roulette: no more guessing, no more empty clicks. He was the final hammer. He was Judgment Day, incarnate. He was painfully modest about this.

Once, he took down a drug-trafficking ring in Colombia. After only a week, he had them panicking. He bribed a few informants to spread rumours and general terror. He silenced a few mid-level goons, for effect. It was simple legwork.

In a week, even the highest-ranking bosses were shaken. Those rumours grew into dread. The mid-level hits were ample proof: this was serious. The bosses were being hunted. Every one of them felt it, deep in their gut. Someone was stalking them.

They retreated to their central meth lab - their most fortified location. This was where they secured their wealth. They were confident that no force could overtake this facility, but the bosses armed themselves, anyway.

The meth lab already had explosive materials, and now it held their munitions... the location itself was a flashpoint.

Through misdirection, Pryce got close. By carrying a dead guard on his back, he absorbed bullets till he reached the security door. He fired on the caustic materials in the lab, creating impromptu chemical warfare. Most of the soldiers were driven off. Whatever they guarded, he tagged with explosives.

Pryce fought to their holdings safe. It was a massive, armoured walk-in closet for stacks of money. He secured its door and hid inside. From there, he remote-detonated their equipment. The whole factory exploded around him - volatile chemicals, flammable materials - everything. The place was built to be a production plant, as well as a tight-walled fortress. It was a maze for lab rats. It was a toxic nightmare, and the worst fire trap imaginable. It was a solar flare trapped in a box.

Where the bosses cowered, their bullets burned. High-caliber rounds discharged in every direction, and rattled the walls. Indoor fireworks made of metal.

All this time, Pryce waited in the bulletproof, fireproof safe. He just waited there while everything roared outside. The money was incinerated, along with everything and everyone else.

They'd tried to make a stand. They discovered too late that they were a single, clustered target. The only safe place in the facility... was the safe itself.

There was no "women-and-children-first" rule, here. It was "richest-and-most-corrupt." These men destroyed lives for profit. And they celebrated that. They were some of the most financially empowered sociopaths in the world. And now they met karma, face-to-face.

After a single week, they were ashes. Pryce contacted The Agency.

"Central? It's Pryce. I'm done here."

Click.

That was Pryce.

Some people go on vacation, for a week. Pryce did his thing... and in one week, he'd created a power vacuum in South America. The Agency seeded operatives in nearby governments. Structure was rebalanced over the following years.

Everyone knew that Pryce left out details. What happened to those mid-level thugs? How did he bypass the security gates? How did he crack the safe combination? He never said. He seemed bitter about it.

Nobody saw him for about a month after that. Ginny persuaded him to have dinner one night, and she claimed he was bright-eyed as always... but rather quiet.

"Do you hate your job?"

Ginny twirled pasta on her fork. She pursed her lips, and looked at him with concern. Pryce was busy chewing. His eyes were downcast.

"Not at all," he muttered. "You?" He looked up to her with a hint of challenge. He'd tossed this back to her. Hot potato.

"Hell, no. I love my job. It's what I'm made for..." Ginny gave her trademark grin. Gleaming, warm, and a little naughty.

Ginny was a tall redhead with pronounced curves. Not pronounced, like a centerfold, but more like 'opera singer.' Her body had no silicone whatsoever, nor was it toned or firm. She was naturally luscious. She stood around six feet, and seemed taller. Mainly, people noticed her hips - she was naturally too wide for most chairs.

She had a playfully defiant attitude. Her red hair suited her; it was brassy, and bold, and exuberant. It expressed personality all by itself. It was like chaos theory having sex with fire. Like many redheads, she was fair-skinned. Men sometimes wondered about her skin underneath. Underneath the blazers and suits, was she still smooth and pale? Did that softness follow her curvy, hyper-feminine physique?

Whenever Ginny was compared to Jessica Rabbit, she laughed louder than anyone else. She was a tigress, not a cartoon lounge singer. Everyone knew she wasn't two-dimensional. She was more like a flirty Jessica Lange, with a few extra curves added for good measure.

She wore rounded, brass-rimmed glasses. They were a happy medium between brainiac and foxy. They were also linked to Agency datastores, and gave her digital read-outs on demand. It was like wearing an international library on your face. She called it style.

"Wellp, I got news for ya..." Ginny's cheeks dimpled. "You know when you came back from the East, and you were all smiley-rosy?"

Ginny paused for effect. Then she sang, teasingly:

"Central's sending you to BACK to THAI-LAND..."

She watched his reaction: Pryce froze stiff. He was excited, definitely. Maybe even thrilled. Ginny could read it on his face, and she wanted to hear the whole story.

He choked-up. He stalled, then quickly changed the subject.

Chapter Two: Too Many

Pryce travelled with with Selene. Selene was fellow agent. Dirty-blonde hair, blue eyes, a little skinnier than trim. Greasy-looking lips. Her smile was glossy and staged. She seemed like the sort of person who smacked her gum constantly. That's what her conversation was like, anyway. Other agents loathed her, but no-one voiced their opinion. Selene's career had the muddy footprints of power-plays. No-one wanted her drama. No-one wanted her bullshit.

When she was assigned to work in Thailand, she perked with enthusiasm. She had a contact there. When she learned she was working with Pryce, she was intrigued. He was high-profile. She'd had her eye on him for a long time.

Pryce was surprised, also. And terrified. He didn't have a contact there, exactly...

Several times in his career, Pryce had to "go dark." It was a necessity, in his profession. Once, he disappeared into the Australian outback. Four times, in the prairies of Canada. But twice, he disappeared in Thailand, in the cities of Chanthaburi and Trat.

In Thailand, it was easy to go quiet. Cover was dense. No-one could follow him. No-one could find him, not even in the city. He was anonymous, there. He didn't matter to anyone. No-one knew his real name, and no-one knew who he was.

But of course, he met someone. A young Thai woman. She was probably his age, or maybe a year or two younger. Her name was Prija. Onruang Prija. They had light conversations in an elevator - it was acceptable exposure, when Pryce had gone dark. It kept him sane. It kept him human. It was elevator in the cellular building, at the edge of the city.

As he stared at the floor, he noticed her stiletto heels. She turned a little, tipped her head curiously, and noticed him.

"Here... on business?" she asked. Her English was clear enough.

"Vacation," he lied, "Just for a bit." He didn't want his voice to be deep and smoky, but it came out that way.

It was that simple. Everything unravelled from there.

He never told anyone... but in his tiny, empty world, he loved her. Maybe he loved her because they were both friendly and innocent. They didn't know each other. She was just the girl in the elevator, and they spoke perhaps once a week. It was so uncomplicated, it felt pure.

If his isolation was a blank page, she was a poem written on it. Or even a quick doodle of a heart, down in the corner. She left her mark.

She was always smiling, with him. He could sense it. It was how she held her hands, and how she turned her neck. It was where she looked, after she spoke. It was the silence, between words. The air swelled with her beauty.

Her smile was perfect. Even when he couldn't see it.

He craved those moments, and savoured them afterward. For all the time he was alone, and hiding, this was his love-life. So simple, but precious to him. It was like sips of water in a desert. Maybe it was a small thing, but then... so are diamonds.

He memorized every detail about her - everything he could remember. He kept it all to himself, and guarded it inside him. When he was completely alone, late at night, he dreamed of kissing her... just lifting her face, and tasting her mouth. He dreamed of her tiny lips, and her sweet eyes closing. He thought about his hands feeling her hair, then holding the sides of her cheeks. He thought about her smooth, warm, cinnamon-dark body. She was sleek, and she was sexy as hell.

Pryce wished he'd known her. He knew her as Prija, and she knew him as Michael.

After he returned to The Agency, he wished that, at the very least, he knew her birthday. Just her birthday. Maybe he could call her, just once a year. But 'going dark' meant he couldn't contact anyone. He had to put his feelings on mute. These were the loneliest times of his life... They were years long past, and he'd missed her, ever since.

She didn't know his work. She didn't fear him. She didn't know the truth. She was like light at the end of a tunnel.

Now Agent Pryce and Agent Selene Meyer were being sent to Thailand. Some underworld big-shot was grooming high-end whores. He sold human lives. He ran prostitution, slave auctions, and death-sports... The scene was total decadence, and god knows what happened beneath the surface. Some people were wealthy enough, they ignored morality. They glossed over it.

Unfortunately, this underworld big-shot was elusive. The Agency had an idea where he'd be, but there was a tight time-frame. Only minimal prep, scarce intel, and no room for error... so The Agency had to send someone good.

Pryce had to work from the shoreline outside Chanthaburi. He and Selene chartered a boat, and arrived at midnight. The whole place was busy - it was all shipping containers and glaring lights. Workers loaded boxes, and ran forklifts on the slick concrete. Men yelped orders in quick, sharp tones. It was business. Even at night, it was brisk.

Selene nudged Pryce on the elbow.

"So, like, we recon the docks. Then find my contact. How are we gonna do this? He's literally a serious target, and we've got two days. That's, like, way too small a window."

"We're good," he grunted.

Two days too many, he thought.

Selene seemed surprised and offended. She was wary. She reminded him:

"We don't even know where this guy is - the intel's not even there."

"The intel's just a collection of leads. Always leads, nothing but leads. It isn't real life." He smirked and nodded. "I'm taking the real-life approach. Better angle."

He looked at her for an awkward moment. She couldn't reply. She fidgeted.

"Well..." she struggled for a comeback, "we gotta recon this place, and secure an exfil. Then we reach my contact. That'll take an hour or two, right?"

"Nah." He slung his arm around her waist, and strolled with her. His smartphone camera was in his free hand. She squirmed.

"I'll do some 3D imaging. We'll play the tourist bit, and we can cover this place in twenty minutes."

"What? We stand out like... like we're a couple of..." Selene winced, and swished her hand up and down. She looked aghast, like she was wearing last year's fashion.

"I know. I know we do. We look like clueless tourists. Take it, and play it out," he smiled. He stared straight ahead, and walked forward.

She hated that he was smiling. He liked that she was authentically clueless.

They walked along the docks, smiling at the boats and the architecture, and photographing anything they could. They convinced everyone that they were oblivious yuppies on their vacation.

Pryce used GPS tracking, and he filmed constantly. He marked geographic reference points - the floodlights at the docks were perfect. Those floodlights also indicated sources of light and shadow. Digital 3D reconstruction could read that, and interpolate.

They scouted the place, smiling like goofy honeymooners. Pryce compiled the data, and his phone built a VR rendering in minutes. Recon complete. Now they had up-to-date escape routes through the docks. If the mission went sideways, they had a tactical advantage.

Selene's contact had an obnoxious moustache and a piece-of-shit car. The car was a huge metal brick that thumped inside. Every time the car accelerated, it groaned and smelled like gas. It could go from dubious to terrifying in eight seconds flat.

His apartment was surprisingly secure. It was a safe-house, by fact of the added door locks and alarm systems. Reinforced steel crawled from the corners of crumbling plaster. Clearly, he invested in security - and not his car.

The apartment was one spartan room for the two of them. It had a double bed. Selene checked the security five times. She asked about the closest contacts Pryce had. She asked about his previous ops. She wanted to know his style in first-response intelligence gathering and priority action execution. She wanted to know everything, except maybe his mother's goldfish's fucking blood type.

Sometimes a child will ask "Whyyy?" over and over again, on permanent repeat. It's more of a game than anything else. Selene played the adult version. He knew what she was doing. She was drilling into him. Trying to find something. Usually, this was about leverage.

Selene and Pryce changed their clothes. They had their backs to each other. It was a professional silence.

They had two days to find their target - a black market broker. Human trafficking. Their target would be hidden, even from the authorities here in Thailand. They would need rest.

They lay in total silence. Fifteen minutes passed. Of course, Selene was restless. Her voice was like the cat that persistently jumped on the kitchen counter. Back up again. And again. She would not... would NOT... fucking stop.

"Do we... uhh... do you think we know each other... well enough?" Selene whispered. Her breath was a slender ribbon in the darkness.

It was a bright, obvious ribbon to Agent Pryce.

"Strip," he told her.

"Hmm?" She pretended she didn't understand.

He rolled to her side of the bed, pinned her shoulders, and kissed hard into her mouth.

She gave a muffled hoot of surprise, and breath rushed through her nose. For a second, the word "pre-emptive strike" flashed through her mind. Like a cat seeing a laser-pointer.

Pryce turned his jaw, and growled to her: "You need to trust your fellow agent. I get it."

To hell with this, Pryce thought. He was going to finish this op in a day. Or less. He didn't need her. This op didn't need her. Selene didn't need her sleepwear.

He gripped around the collar of her nightgown and wrenched it apart. The fabric snapped and tore wide open.

"OHHH!" She exclaimed. Her nightgown split, and flapped to the sides. Selene's naked breasts wobbled suddenly. Her eyes were wide with shock.

Pryce immediately mounted her. His tense musculature carried him over her body, and crouched him close. He was fully erect. Whatever she expected from him, he was already anticipating her.

Hmm, she thought. At least I'll fuck him. I'll know what kind of man he is, and what he's got down below...

It was thick and rigid, and tapped her belly... then her waist... and smoothed down her pelvis.

"You're shaved, Selene. You're sleek. You were hoping for something, huh?" His arms grabbed her wrists, and pinned them high above her head. They thudded with the headboard.

"Hmm," he smiled, examining her. "You're damned beautiful, Selene. I've never been this lucky. Such wet lips..."

He kissed into her, then growled through his teeth:

"...and such a pretty tongue." Those words smouldered.

Selene had asked questions to get in his head. Maybe irritation would trigger a response... like losing his temper, and yelling at the damned cat on the countertop. A reaction. Something authentic. If this failed, she'd bed him, and discover what made him tick. In bed, she'd get past his walls. She could take the lead.

That didn't happen. He took her.

He kissed wet marks over her tits. They were soft mounds of warmth. They were like warm dollops of vanilla-white skin. Her sweet nipples were rosebuds. He licked them, and sucked them, and took his time. His penis flexed harder, like a long fist.

Her arms were gripped over her head - she was open for him, now. Her gentle breasts were fully exposed to him. There was nothing she could do but lie there, feeling his hot tongue paint her skin.

Wait, she thought. What's this? Why am I vulnerable to him? Why are my walls down?

In his mind, Pryce decided to put her down. Immobilize her. He needed her out of the way, so he could finish this job. He wouldn't harm her, but maybe he'd weaken her a little.

She stared at his bright, gleaming eyes. They grinned at her. His penis dragged down her smooth belly. It left a long dribble of pre-cum, across the swell of her pubic mound, all the way down to her split.

Selene inhaled sharply. Her shoulders shifted, and her arms pulled, but he suspended her there. He held her arms firmly. Her breasts were so white, she nearly glowed in the dark.